He had no coat. He had been hustled away so abruptly that he had left his French captain’s coat hanging in his room. The evening was cool, but not cold, and after the harsh nights he had spent in the wreck Hayden was certain he would endure.
He was seated in the back of a small cart, across from him the naval lieutenant armed with a pistol, ahead a driver and an armed soldier. There were men on horseback, including a lieutenant or captain; in the poor light Hayden was not sure which.
The look upon Madame Adair’s face when he did not deny the lieutenant’s claim was something he would never forget.
‘No, no,’ she had protested. ‘He is Capitaine Mercier!’
But he was not, and she had looked at him, first in surprise and then betrayal. He had felt so very low as they loaded him into the cart.
Betrayal of trust seemed to be what defined him, suddenly. He had betrayed Henrietta, then his men by abandoning them, and now Madame Adair, who had given her complete trust to him. For a man who took pride in acting honourably, even at great cost to himself, this was the strangest feeling. Who would think well of him now? Even Philip Stephens might withdraw his support, or so he imagined.
As the cart rolled, the men upon the bench spoke quietly, and laughed occasionally, as did the men on horseback. He had not been manacled or put in irons or even bound, but perhaps they could see he was not strong enough to escape, though it did not stop him from contemplating such a course.
The great worry now was how the local authorities would respond to Hayden claiming to have been a French sea officer. It was, he realized, a foolish thing to have done and something he would almost certainly not have claimed had he not been so utterly spent and confused when he woke. If the authorities named him a spy and sent him to Paris he would more than likely not leave that city alive – and he could not claim to be with child.
Rest was the physic for Hayden’s present condition, and it was all he could do to stay in his seat. Every part of his being wanted to lie down on the deck of the cart and sleep. It would not matter in the least to him that the planks were hard, the road rutted, and the cart poorly sprung. Looking across at the lieutenant he could see the man was engaged in the same struggle. He too was not recovered from their ordeal.
‘What became of Capitaine Lacrosse, if I may ask?’ Hayden enquired.
‘He survived, Capitaine, but was recalled to Paris.’ The man shrugged as if nothing else need be said.
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ Hayden replied, and meant it. Lacrosse was an honourable man, and it did not improve Hayden’s mood to learn that he had gone to his death. Fleeing might never have occurred to the Frenchman or perhaps it had not been possible – he had been taken to Paris rather than simply summoned.
‘There was much bad news that day,’ the lieutenant observed, shaking his head, ‘though not perhaps for you, Capitaine. Did you know that your ship was taken by English cruisers before it could make Brest.’
‘My ship?’ Hayden was confused.
‘Oui. The frigate – Themis.’
‘Was retaken by the English?’
‘So it has been reported.’
Hayden could have fallen from the cart. The bad-luck ship had had a bit of good luck for a change? He could hardly credit it.
Over and again Hayden fell asleep only to catch himself as he slumped down. Brest – if that were indeed their objective – was many miles distant and would probably not be reached before midday.
It was light when Hayden awoke, jounced by a rut in the road. He lay half upon the little bench, across from the sleeping naval lieutenant who seemed to have lost his pistol.
Hayden sat up, groggily, and shook his aching head. For the life of him he could not remember lying down or falling asleep, which he found more than a little disconcerting. One of the horsemen noticed him and prodded the navy lieutenant with a hand. The man opened his eyes, looked around and then scrambled to a sitting position, searching the bottom of the cart.
‘Where is my pistol?’
The man riding beside the driver reached back and passed the missing firearm to the lieutenant, butt first.
‘Luckily the Anglais fell asleep before you or he would have had your gun.’
They all laughed but only briefly. Fatigue had the better of all of them and no one was in particularly good humour, Hayden guessed.
The sea came into view, distantly, as they crested a hill and it took a moment to realize that this was very close to the parts that he, Hawthorne and Wickham had traversed when sent ashore by Captain Hart to view the French fleet. How very long ago that seemed!
If that was true then the Rade de Brest was only a few miles off – but it was a very considerable body of water and it would take more than a day to travel round it.
Within half an hour Hayden realized that this would not be their course, as the little cart and its guard of honour wound down a hillside to a tiny village upon the shore. Here a navy cutter lay to her anchor, her boat ashore, an aspirant awaiting their arrival.
‘Is this the Anglais? Capitaine Charles ’ayden?’ the boy asked.
‘It is,’ the army officer in charge replied. ‘You will take him and Lieutenant Nadeau, as well.’
The navy lieutenant jumped down from the cart, trying to hide his weakness. ‘And you must treat him well, you little shit. I will tell your captain. He saved many a French sailor when our ship was wrecked.’
The boy looked a little disconcerted by this sudden assault and only nodded in response.
‘You must sign my papers,’ the army man instructed, climbing down from his horse. ‘Do not think for a moment that you can escape that.’
Signatures were duly scribed, insults traded between the two services, and Hayden and his keeper loaded into the ship’s boat and rowed out to the cutter, where they climbed aboard. Men were waiting with irons for Hayden, but Lacrosse’s lieutenant stepped in between.
‘Those will not be needed, I can assure you.’
This did not sit well with the captain of the cutter, an officer only a little older than Wickham by his appearance. He and the lieutenant stepped away and conferred a moment and when they returned the captain told his men that the irons could be dispensed with, and he bowed to Hayden.
‘You are welcome aboard, Capitaine.’
‘Merci.’ Hayden was more than a little surprised but the intervention of Lacrosse’s lieutenant appeared to have worked some small miracle. The anchor was weighed and the ship got under sail. There was only a little wind so the cutter drifted along, the shores of the Rade creeping past.
It seemed cruel that such weather would arrive now. Had the day been clear when Les Droits de l’Homme was chased they would have seen the shore from many miles away and not been wrecked. Yet this spring day seemed almost painfully fair to Hayden. Only a few days previously he had been wandering along the borders of the land of the dead. Now here he was, sailing upon the Rade de Brest, caressed by a sweet-smelling breeze. Perhaps tomorrow would see him in great danger, but for the next few hours he would be beyond harm.
He wondered what had become of Madame Adair. Had the Jacobins come that night as she believed they would. Had they taken her away? Certainly she would be found guilty if so. Her only hope for survival then would be the almost impossibly slim chance that Hayden’s seed had taken root in her womb. These melancholy thoughts were so at odds with the day and his present circumstances that he could hardly bear to contemplate them.
He turned his mind to Henrietta and his betrayal. Given that Madame Adair was an exemplary person who did not deserve persecution, Hayden somehow did not feel that what he had done was wrong. Yet he felt a strange sense of guilt over it all the same. The fact that the experience had not been entirely without pleasure seemed to make a lie of his justification.
The whole afternoon was required to cross the bay and arrive at the naval station on the north shore. Here some time was wasted as the captain of the cutter and Lacrosse’s lieutenant tried to learn to whom Hayden should be delivered. While he waited Hayden had an exceptional view of the French fleet and made very careful note of what ships were present and how ready for sea they appeared to be.
Finally Hayden was handed over to three guards, and took his leave of Lacrosse’s man, thanking him for his kind treatment.
‘Capitaine Lacrosse had a high opinion of you, Capitaine,’ the lieutenant explained. ‘I have done this for him.’
‘I am grateful,’ Hayden said. ‘If you meet Capitaine Lacrosse again, give him my thanks.’
‘I will, sir,’ but there was, in the man’s eye, something that told Hayden he did not expect to see Lacrosse again in this life.
Hayden was led into the citadel, which was both great and labyrinthine. The general direction that they seemed to be going, however, was down. Eventually they came to the lockup and it was not a healthful place. After passing a number of large cells occupied by gaunt-looking men, a cell was opened by a guard, and Hayden sent in.
‘Why are you putting this Frenchman in with us?’ one of the prisoners asked in French.
‘You may give it over, Mr Wickham. They smoked me.’
‘Ah,’ the midshipman said. ‘I am sorry to hear it.’
Very quickly, Hayden learned that no one knew why they were being held in Brest or where they were going to be imprisoned.
‘Certainly they have prisons for foreigners,’ Barthe said, somewhat offended that they were in a common prison for Frenchmen.
‘They do, Mr Barthe, but perhaps there is some administrative dispute about to which one we should be confined.’
Mr Barthe made a growling sound.
To his great relief, Hayden found all of his men from the wreck present but for poor Franks, whose body had washed up on the beach. They were none of them hale, and the youngest of them were not the least affected. Though the cell was not large Hayden managed to find a moment, when most of the men were sleeping, to speak to Griffiths.
Griffiths, like everyone, appeared frail and stiff, as though still affected with the cold from their ordeal. ‘I thought Mr Ransome might not survive but he is on the mend, Captain. All the midshipmen were knocked back but they are thriving now. Better food would be the best physic but none of us has any money to buy victuals, as we were all robbed while we lay on the beach.’
‘I was treated the same,’ Hayden told him. ‘And yourself, Doctor? How do you fare?’
‘Well enough. I cannot say I thrived, lying exposed to the elements upon the deck of a wrecked ship, but I feel my strength returning … if only I could get warm!’
‘Everyone says the same. Perhaps a good fever is needed.’
The doctor’s face turned dark. ‘Do not even jest about such things. Prisoners are breeding grounds for fevers of all the worst sorts.’
‘I was not thinking – indeed, my mental powers appear to have been much reduced as they were by the blow to my head some months ago.’
‘I am sure we all feel exactly the same, Captain. Another half a day and I believe we would have begun to lose our own men. That is how close we all came to death.’
‘Rest, I am certain, will do much to restoring our vigour. If I could but sleep. Nightmares haunt me the moment I close my eyes – all to do with being trapped in the ship, drowning in darkness.’ Hayden shivered.
‘My own dreams are much the same,’ the doctor admitted. ‘I dare say, we shall all suffer from this malady for some weeks or even months.’
Hayden had little doubt that the doctor was right – all of the men slept but poorly, moaned in their sleep and started awake often in the greatest possible distress. The cells in the Brest citadel were deep within the foundations where daylight could not penetrate. The air was noisome and dank and the single tallow candle granted each cell did not even send its light so far as the corners. There were tales of men living in such misery for decades, but Hayden suspected that few lasted more than a handful of years; disease and despair preyed upon the inmates as effectively as the guillotine. It was Hayden’s hope that his men would be moved to some better place soon, though he dreaded them being marched any distance in their present states. None would go very far before they collapsed.
If not for the distant ringing of the citadel bells marking the passing of hours, time would have appeared to have abandoned its duty. Some effort was made to keep up the spirits of the men. The cell was swept and cleaned as best they could, duties were assigned for water and waste that must be dealt with. Stories were told, even old saws that had often been heard before were brought out and made welcome.
‘Tell us about rounding the Horn again,’ someone would say to Barthe at least once a day, and the sailing master would oblige and tell the same story, differing only, from one telling to the next, in the height of the seas and ferocity of the winds. Songs were sung by individuals and some by everyone who could muster the energy.
When the two daily meals were brought, Hayden would press the guards and ask if they knew what would be done with them or if there was not some official who could speak to him but each time the answers were the same – they knew nothing and no official wished to climb down so many stairs. Talk began that they had been forgotten. That no one in England knew they lived. They would rot in the dark.
Hayden would cut such talk short and call for a song or a story. The spirits of the men must not be allowed to sink too low. Melancholia was a disease as real as gaol fever and Hayden did not wish to see it take hold among his crew.
Several days passed in this way, and then, in the forenoon of a day no one could name or fix a number to, a troop of guards led by an officer appeared outside their cell, a gaoler in tow. To everyone’s surprise the door was swung wide, and the officer beckoned them out in a manner that appeared almost amiable.
‘Come,’ he said in French, ‘you are to accompany me.’
The sleeping were roused, and the rest gathered their resources and rose stiffly. ‘Where are we going?’ Hayden asked. ‘To a prison?’
The officer shrugged. ‘It is not for me to say, Capitaine. Bring your men along, if you please.’
The British sailors trooped out and, with difficulty, ascended the many steps, climbing up through the levels of the citadel until they came out into blinding sunlight, then descended a stair into a gravel courtyard.
Here they were met by a group of officers and attendants, one of whom, Hayden was delighted to see, was Capitaine Raymonde Lacrosse.
‘Capitaine Lacrosse,’ Hayden said in French, ‘I am pleased to see you well, sir.’
‘And I you, Capitaine. So many men were lost. You must have been touched by God to have survived.’ Lacrosse smiled.
‘Do you know where we are being sent? To what prison? My men are not yet recovered enough to make a long march.’
‘You shall make the shortest march possible – a stroll, I should call it.’ He smiled. ‘Down to the quay, Capitaine Hayden, and aboard a ship.’
Hayden was confused. ‘How far do they send us, then?’
‘Not so far. You will be home tomorrow or the day next.’ He smiled again. ‘I have been in Paris working on your behalf, Capitaine Hayden. Once I had convinced my superiors that Les Droits de l’Homme had a fatal flaw – her lower gundeck was too near the water for us to open the gunports in anything but a calm – I was absolved of all blame and reinstated to my position. I then set out to convince them that without you and your crew many more lives would have been lost. And I must say they were moved to hear of the loss of your bosun caused by French sailors. It has been agreed, therefore, to return you and your men to England. It took some time to arrange this with your government but they have now agreed to allow a single transport to carry you all to Portsmouth and return here without being molested by your cruisers. It is, I believe, unprecedented and a singular honour by both nations.’
Hayden could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Do I dream, Capitaine Lacrosse. This seems … impossible.’
‘It is more than possible, my friend, it is a fait accompli. You have but to accompany me down to the quay and you will set out this day.’ He turned to another officer standing by. ‘Is everything in order?’
‘Would Capitaine Hayden object to signing these forms for my records?’
‘Would you mind, Capitaine?’ Lacrosse asked. ‘Bureaucrats, you know.’
Hayden signed everywhere he was asked, only glancing briefly at the documents, trusting that Lacrosse would not be involved in anything underhanded – he was too honourable.
And so they made their way down to the quay, a few guards in company, though they appeared not at all concerned about their charges and were quite friendly and amiable to all concerned.
‘You appear quite hale, Capitaine,’ Hayden observed. ‘Given our ordeal you have recovered rapidly.’
‘I have been blessed with a strong constitution, Capitaine Hayden – a great blessing in our profession. Ah, here,’ he said gesturing to a small gate. ‘We have but a brief stop to make here.’
They were led in past guards to a barracks.
‘I thought you might all desire a moment to bathe. Your clothes will be taken and washed, and sent with you aboard the ship. The commander of the citadel has ordered clothing for all of you.’
To bathe was a luxury Hayden had dreamt of these last days, for the bedding in the cells was lousy and they were all bitten and itching. They bathed and dressed in the clothing supplied – simple breaches, hose and a cotton shirt. Still, to be clean and dressed in fresh clothing did something for their feelings of well-being that Hayden could hardly describe. They emerged to a table set for them and were offered all that they might eat. Lacrosse joined them and was so amused by the looks upon the Englishmen’s faces that he kept laughing in spite of himself.
‘I am sorry, Capitaine, please excuse me, but if you could see the looks upon your faces … No one yet seems to believe their good fortune – though it stems from perhaps the worst fortune.’
‘We have gone from believing we would die, to being certain we would spend some months at least in prison, to being pardoned and sent home in very short order, Capitaine Lacrosse. It is a great deal to take in.’
‘Indeed it is. I myself thought I might end upon the guillotine, but it seems the man who drew the draughts of Les Droits de l’Homme had some enemies in Paris and so he was blamed and has fled the country, poor fellow. And instead of ending my days or at the very least my career, I am to be given another ship.’
‘And somehow you have even managed to have us sent home, for which I can never thank you.’
‘Capitaine Hayden, it is I who can never thank you. When my own officers refused to do their duty, to my lasting shame, your own men stepped forward and took their places. Your sailing master and midshipman piloted one boat safely ashore and I am certain that your bosun would have done the same had he been given the chance. His death will hang over me all the rest of my days.’
‘Sir, your position was made untenable by your own government and you bear none of the blame,’ Hayden said firmly.
‘You are too kind.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Ah, I have almost forgotten to say that I lost everything in my cabin. Had you anything stored there it would be gone too. I am sorry but nothing was saved.’
‘I am sorry to hear it, Capitaine.’
They came to a set of steps where a boat was waiting. ‘C’est des Anglais pour la Fortune, Capitaine?’ a sailor called out.
‘Yes, these are the men. You will treat them well. They saved many French lives and lost some of their own.’
‘We have all heard, Capitaine. Be at peace; we shall treat them like honoured guests.’
Lacrosse turned to Hayden. ‘I must take my leave of you, Capitaine.’
‘I am in your debt, Capitaine Lacrosse. I do hope when next we meet it shall not be as enemies.’
‘I hope the same, Capitaine Hayden.’ He looked at Hayden oddly. ‘You have no coat, Capitaine?’
‘It was lost.’
‘Then you will take mine’, and before Hayden could protest he removed it and pushed it into Hayden’s hands. ‘I will not hear otherwise. It will be cold upon the ship this night. Bon voyage.’
He thanked all the English sailors, especially Barthe and Wickham, and not without a show of emotion. The remains of Hayden’s crew climbed into the boat and took their places, but before they could push off there came a shout from down the dock to hold the boat.
Hayden looked at Hawthorne, who sat nearby.
‘Have they changed their minds?’ he asked.
‘I do not know.’
Three guards came hurrying along the quay, a man held between them.
‘Ah, just in time,’ Lacrosse announced.
The prisoner was Rosseau – Hayden’s cook!
Lacrosse put a hand on Rosseau’s shoulder and the little Frenchman looked as though he might collapse from fear. ‘This member of your crew was mistakenly thought to be French, no doubt because he speaks our tongue almost as well as you, Capitaine Hayden. But clearly he is English.’
The manacles were removed from Rosseau’s hands and the terrified Frenchman was bundled into the boat, almost too weak to make it on his own.
Lacrosse waved the boat away and it set out across the Rade de Brest.
Rosseau hid his face in his hands and his shoulders heaved between deep gasps.
Wickham put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You are safe. Be of good heart.’
‘I was … on my way to the guillotine …’ Rosseau managed.
‘For God’s sake, man,’ Wickham whispered, ‘do not speak!’